Grand Extractor City.
Nick wasn't sure what he should expect after arriving.
When he arrived for the first time and saw Grand Extractor City, he was quite surprised.
It was… big.
Not in terms of width but in terms of height.
The city only took up a fourth of Crimson City's area, which was crazy since a huge part of Crimson City's population was in the megastructure.
In terms of area, Crimson City belonged to the smaller cities, while its population was a bit above average.
But here…
In terms of area, this city was tiny!
However, to Nick, it looked like a big mountain of metallic cubes.
It was like the citizens just built cube-like buildings on top of other cube-like buildings.
The cubes all had different sizes, and because of that, they were stacked very unevenly, giving the city a very unsafe and asynchronous feeling.
The bottom-most cubes all had uniform sizes and were neatly and seamlessly stacked on top of each other, but starting at the fourth, fifth, or sixth cube, the sizes started to vary rapidly.
Smaller cubes barely took up half of the width or length of the cube below them, and a cube above them was built that was twice as big.
It was insanely chaotic.
The walls of the city were barely five meters high at the bottom.
Yet, something surprising was happening.
Around 50 meters above the top end of the walls… was another wall?
There was another wall that was about ten meters high, and it uniformly surrounded the city.
Then, another 50 meters higher was another wall, but this one was only five meters high.
All in all, the city was around 120 meters high, and there was an average of eleven cubes taking up these 120 meters.
Nick also saw scaffolding.
A LOT of scaffolding.
There was SO MUCH scaffolding!
Naturally, the citizens needed to get around the city somehow, and since all the buildings were stacked on top of each other, there were no stairwells or elevators going through them.
Because of that, there was scaffolding everywhere that acted as makeshift connections between buildings.
Even more, the different pieces of scaffolding looked very different from each other.
Some of them had humongous fences surrounding them, while others didn't even have railings.
Some of them were in immaculate shape and incredibly stable, while others were filled with holes that an adult human could fit through.
After looking at the city for a while, Nick found out why that was.
'Everyone is responsible for their own scaffolding.'
Apparently, people had to keep their access to the city usable.
If they didn't… well…
Sucks to be them.
If they didn't have a lot of money, they would be stuck there.
If they had some money, they needed to shout at some passersby or neighbors with a very good offer.
The first impression Nick got of the city was that nobody gave a shit.
They didn't care about basic safety.
They didn't care about looks.
They didn't care about efficiency.
Everything just grew to look like this, and nobody could be arsed to change it.
However, there was one thing that was unique to this city.
It was something that Nick hadn't seen before.
Nick saw powerful Extractors and rich people coming out of house cubes that were just as horrible as all the other ones.
There were barely any luxurious or huge cubes that could be considered mansions.
It was like everyone was living in just enough space.
It was almost like there was no difference between rich and poor in this city.
The rich and poor also seemed to eat roughly the same things.
Bird.
They ate a lot of birds.
Due to the scaffolding everywhere, many people lived their entire lives in the spaces between the individual cubes and never even touched the ground once.
Since everybody was living, working, and eating up there, many things fell through the cracks.
The bottom of the city was filled with garbage, shit, rot, food, sludge, and so on.
This was a paradise for insects and rodents.
The lowest level of the city was overrun by them.
Naturally, this allowed a large population of birds to thrive, and they all fed on these critters.
Another interesting aspect was that there were barely any visible people "on the streets".
With such a density of buildings, one would expect that there would be many people clamoring back and forth.
Yet, there was barely anyone.
The only people Nick saw were a couple of people working.
Everyone else was inside their houses.
Nick could see through a couple of opened windows and saw the people just sitting there.
Sleeping, casually eating, looking at the wall, relaxing…
Most of the houses were not very tidy and filled with filth.
However, there was a surprising absence of pests in the houses themselves.
There was almost barely any mold.
All the trash and filth were just clutter.
'It seems like the people are living a sedentary and lazy lifestyle but still retain enough initiative and drive to keep their lives relatively safe,' Nick thought.
'While everyone eats the same bland shit, the meal is actually nutritious enough to keep someone alive.'
'The city is in a horrendous state, but it is good enough to survive.'
Nick looked at the city for a while.
'I guess this is the representation of sloth.'
'Good enough.'
'Barely acceptable.'
'Okay.'
At first glance, this image looked contradictory.
Trash and filth everywhere, but no pests.
Bland and same-y food, but everyone is mostly healthy.
The city was like an old machine.
Yet, if one looked at the city for a while, one would notice the logic behind everything.
Being sick was bothersome.
Buying expensive things was wasteful and unnecessary.
Dealing with rodents was work.
Because of that, people took care of their basic health and kept their surroundings at barely acceptable levels of cleanliness.
Like this, they could laze around as much as possible.
Nick watched the city for a long time to gather intel. Due to the power of this city, Nick didn't dare to enter without knowing exactly how the city works.
The more Nick watched the city, the more surprised he became.
'They are only working for five days a week?' Nick thought in shock.
Working for only five days a week was crazy!
And that wasn't even everything!
They also only worked for around six hours per day!
These people barely worked for 30 hours per week!
Even more, most of them were lazing around during these couple of hours of work!
'Sloth truly controls this city,' Nick thought with furrowed brows.
Over the next couple of weeks, Nick only saw a single caravan arriving in the city, and they very quickly left with plenty of complaints.
They didn't even sell a million credits worth of goods.
The only things they sold were some basic things that the city needed to keep the rat and insect population alive at the bottom of the city.
Something else that was interesting was that Nick didn't even see a single Extractor leaving the city.
The Extractors just walked from their homes to their work and then back to their homes again.
They also only worked for six hours per day.
This was crazy!
How did they get all of these Specters and all of these powerful Extractors?
Even more, how did they actually manage to get through Zephosis and the Consumption?
One needed a lot of willpower to get through these things!
Sadly, Nick didn't find an answer while watching the city from the outside.
On top of that, gathering intel had never been this difficult before.
Usually, Nick gathered intel by listening in on conversations.
Yet, these people barely talked!
Friends just sat together, doing nothing.
Couples just lay in each other's embrace.
Employees didn't say more than the bare minimum.
There was almost no conversation in this city.
Nick only knew where the biggest Manufacturer was, but he had no idea about any of the Specters the Manufacturer had.
Nobody was talking about anything!
In the end, Nick took a deep breath and closed in on the city.
Nick arrived rather quickly at the small wall surrounding the city.
Next, Nick inspected the wall.
'The wall is using Zephyx, but I can't be sure what it does with the Zephyx.'
Nick looked around the wall for a while.
There were no guards.
This gave Nick time to analyze the wall's function.
And he found that…
'This makes no sense!' Nick thought in frustration. 'None of these logic patterns follow any kind of established standard!'
'All of this is completely wild and chaotic!'
The wall was just as chaotic as the city itself.
In the end, Nick had to sigh.
'I have no idea what the wall can do.'
Next, Nick turned into mist and floated to the other walls.
They were even more chaotic than the wall at the bottom.
For several hours, Nick just looked at the city from outside.
Everything was chaotic, but…
It worked.
It worked really, really well.
For the first time, Nick didn't know how he should enter the city.
He was amazing at getting into places, but that was because he always gathered intelligence before attempting to do something.
He couldn't gather any important information from this city.
After hours of planning, Nick came up with a plan.
But it was risky.
Finally, Nick readied himself and snuck into the city.
And a second later, his ability deactivated.